I’d like to discuss a harsh reality: Exercise is a stress! I’ll explain why this stress is good for us, how to be mindful of it, and guidelines to better program your workouts to ensure you aren’t overdoing it and accumulating unnecessary stress.
To start off, you may be wondering why exercise is considered stress and to better understand this, I’d like to introduce you to one of the most fundamental principles of exercise science. This principle is known as the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) principle. The GAS principle describes how our bodies respond to physiological stress.
In the case of resistance training, we perform various sets and repetitions of an exercise to stress a muscle. This stress on the muscle comes through the form of damage to the muscle fibers and is referred to as micro-lesions. When our body detects these micro-lesions and/or stress on the muscle, it sends proteins to repair the muscle to the point beyond your previous baseline. This is why our muscles can get bigger and stronger.
It is important to be mindful of this reality as you progress in your training because there will be days when you are not physically prepared to add more stress to your system. A prime example of this is when you are sick or getting over being sick. Your immune system is working hard to fight off an illness, so we don’t want to create more physiological stress because it will negatively impact your recovery from your illness and the benefit of your workout.
Another example is lack of sleep or nutrition. Sleep and nutrition are essential for energy production and your bodies ability to recover from a workout. If you are running low on sleep, it is more valuable to rest and catch up on sleep than it is to work out. The same goes for nutrition. Ensure you have the nutrients to fuel your workout and recovery or else you may not be having a beneficial adaptation from your workouts.
If I can give you one thing to take away from this reading, it is that you do not get stronger from your workouts. You get stronger from the recovery between your workouts. Part of your recovery may include muscle soreness. This is perfectly natural and can appear anywhere from 24-48 hours after your workout. If you are feeling sore after a workout, I recommend gentle activity to help encourage blood flow and movement. A walk with the dog or relaxing bike ride can be great forms to help boost your recovery without adding to your soreness.
When it comes to our workouts it is still important to have a well-designed workout to ensure you are working towards your goals. Set and repetition guidelines have been created so individuals can knowingly monitor training variables and predict their training outcome. I have attached a chart for your information. The weight you use impacts the number of repetitions you can achieve so please remember to prioritize quality repetitions over quantity of repetitions. In the beginning, it is most likely better to avoid reaching muscular failure where you cannot perform another rep. However, technical failure, which is reaching the point to where form begins to break down, can be a great way to push yourself appropriately and utilize the sets and reps’ guidelines.
I hope this information can be of some benefit to you in your exercise pursuits.
Jordan McGinnis is Fitness & Wellness Coordinator at the JCC South Hills. If you have any questions or would like to learn more, he can be reached at [email protected].
